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Office of the Assemblies

Resolution: SA R39: Zoom Live Transcript Implementation Request

Date03/09/2022
ActionAcknowledged by the President
Notes

SA R39

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Dear Anuli,
 
Thank you for conveying to me Resolution 39: Zoom Live Transcript Implementation Request. I appreciate the sentiment underlying this resolution and am, in principle, supportive of it. While the urgency of this proposal has waned now that Cornell University has resumed in-person instruction and class meetings are no longer being held via Zoom, it is possible to turn on the live automatic transcription function in Zoom when delivering class meetings via Zoom. Please note:
 
  1. As you noted in the resolution, there may be classes for which turning on automatic live transcription is either not possible or would be intrusive to the class material or learning environment, in which case instructors would maintain the discretion not to turn on this feature within Zoom.
  2. Unfortunately, there currently is no way to set Zoom captioning as a default setting, and therefore instructors would need to remember to turn it on for each individual meeting, once launched. It is possible that some instructors may forget to start live captioning at the beginning of an in-class Zoom meeting. In such cases, any participant in the meeting can ask the host to enable live captioning, and they can make that request anonymously.
  3. The quality of auto-transcription is quite variable and depends on both the use of technical language and speech patterns of the speaker. In some cases, faculty have reported that the auto-transcript is too garbled to be useful to students. In such cases, students registered with Student Disabilities Services who utilize transcription as an accommodation can work with their instructor and SDS to find a better solution.
The expectation that instructors record their Zoom lectures if teaching synchronous online courses is, however, more complicated. While the availability of recorded lectures can indeed be useful for students who would like to reengage in the material after attending class, we have seen throughout the pandemic that absenteeism is often higher when lecture recordings are available. Furthermore, data collected from students in the Fall 2020 semester showed that the more students relied on class recordings, the more challenging they found it to keep up with their coursework. Such a decision would necessitate discussion among, and support from, the faculty, and so I have passed the resolution on to Eve De Rosa, Dean of Faculty, for possible consideration by the Faculty Senate.
 
Sincerely,
 
Martha E. Pollack
 
 
Martha E. Pollack
President, Cornell University
300 Day Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853